


something i've forgotten

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, anyway missy survives getting shot in the back but shes fucking pissed about it, it is with a heavy heart that i change this fic's canon-compliancy rating from '100' to '0', we all know the john simm master is too much of a pussy to actually seriously nerf himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2020-11-02 00:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 14,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20561339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: “You know, I used to be Prime Minister of the UK,” Missy remarked, apropos of nothing.





	1. Chapter 1

Missy was not having a very good day.

Firstly, she’d been the victim of an attempted murder-suicide, a buy-one-get-one-free deal in which she’d been both the perpetrator and the receiver of a particularly nasty crime.

Secondly, upon being abruptly sonic’d in the back, she’d been bowled over by an incredible pain one might associate with a charming little stint in the electric chair.

Thirdly, she had ended up flat on the ground and had absolutely _ ruined _ her skirt.

None of those reasons were why she was pissed, of course; she actually found the whole experience rather entertaining, like one of the funnier episodes of _ It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia_. _ It’s Always Bullshit from Gallifrey_, perhaps. At any rate, she was pissed because she was now suppressing a regeneration like one might suppress a shitload of vomit until they can get someone to hold their hair back. It was… annoying.

However, the bitch _ was _ back in business.

Currently, that ‘business’ was staggering around looking for a lift. Then, ‘business’ was finding one, passing out in it, and waking up jittery a few years in the future. Not because she’d been asleep _ that _ long, mind--just because time flowed differently on this spaceship, fluxing and failing between the floors, all thanks to a great big bastard of a black hole. A whole generation could live and die in the duration of a dream.

That, at least--the thought of families dying--was comforting, and Missy felt something like a smile on her face.

The face she wanted to _ keep _ , dammit. One of her hands was already glowing. She clenched it into a fist and kept it like that until she’d successfully hijacked an escape pod with only minimal murder. Unable to pilot the shuttlecraft one-handed--the thing seemed cranky at her, which she didn’t understand because she _ had _ kept the murder to a minimum, she really _ had _\--she reset its parameters to factory default, closed her eyes, and hoped for the worst.

She was hurtling toward _ somewhere_. She hoped it wasn’t somewhere _ nice _ or _ kind _ or _ good_, or she’d actually mcfreakin lose it.

In point of fact, she was hurtling toward the United States of America on planet Earth, which was neither nice nor kind nor good--but it was, to its credit, approaching rapidly.

Too rapidly.

This was going to be a crash-landing, and not one of the fun ones.

Yeehaw.


	2. Chapter 2

THREE MINUTES LATER.

Soo-Min was not having a very good day.

She’d just failed a math test, which by her definition meant she’d received a B, and was currently sprawled face-up on her bed with a pint of ice-cream, face red, limbs akimbo, and sobbing openly. High-schoolers were like that. Actually, most of Earth was like that. She didn’t hear the giant crash followed by a loud explosion and some very creative curse words because she was playing, at top volume, Simon & Garfunkel’s _ The Sounds of Silence_.

A knock on the door, though, she couldn’t ignore. She went downstairs to answer it, putting on a brave face, which meant she’d wiped away precisely one (1) tear. She kept the pint of ice-cream under her arm, for security.

The dirty, cruel-faced woman at the door took it from her neatly, and began eating out of it with her hands.

Soo-Min kind of stared.

“Mmh,” the woman said, after a few moments of trying to chew. “Brain freeze.”

“Yeah,” agreed Soo-Min, as if these circumstances weren’t strange at all, “It does that.”

The woman winced, swallowed, and held out a sticky hand. “Missy,” she said.

“Cool,” said Soo-Min, not shaking it. “Are you homeless?”

“No,” said Missy, then looked briefly disturbed.

“Cool,” said Soo-Min again. She racked her brains for where the strange woman’s accent was from. She knew she’d heard it before, in an interview with some celebrity named Dave Elevennant, or something. Finally, it came to her.

“Are you from Scotland?”

“No, I’m from space. Try to keep up.”

“Nobody’s from space,” Soo-Min objected, letting Missy push past her into the house. “I mean, you’ve gotta be, like, from a planet.”

“I am,” Missy crooned. “It burned to the ground.”

“Is that why you’re on Earth, then?”

Missy spun around. “This is Earth?”

“Yeah.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause.

“You know, I used to be Prime Minister of the UK,” Missy remarked, apropos of nothing.

“Cool,” said Soo-Min. “You’re in my house.”

“Yeah,” said Missy.

Another pause. Soo-Min scratched the toe of her shoe into the hardwood floor. “Do you like it?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither. Trash can’s in the kitchen; you can throw the ice-cream package away if you’re finished with it.”

“Or I could have you do that.” Missy tossed it to the floor, where the rest of the ice-cream splattered. Soo-Min watched it, making no effort to clean it up--in fact, making no emotional reaction at all.

Missy spun in a slow circle, taking in the living room. One (1) painting of four (4) lotus flowers, the colours of which were echoed by precisely zero (0) items of furniture. Two (2) precariously-positioned vases on one (1) dusty coffee table. Three (3) threadbare armchairs. One (1) carpet. One (1) sofa. One (1) really depressed-looking American kid.

“I will have to kill you at some point; just being honest,” said Missy. There’d been enough small talk.

“Fine,” said Soo-Min with a shrug.

Missy narrowed her eyes. “That doesn’t bother you.”

“No, not really.”

“Why not?”

At the question, Soo-Min seemed to perk up slightly. “Life sucks anyways. Plus, if you kill me, my family gets life insurance. And I don’t have to do my homework. And I’ll find out if there’s an afterl--”

“The afterlife’s no good; I made it,” Missy interrupted. She then completely refused to elaborate.

“Why are you in my house?” Soo-Min asked.

“Was the closest one.”

“Why are you on Earth?”

“Was the closest one.”

“Okay,” said Soo-Min, feeling the closest thing to curiosity she’d felt in months. She was actually finding the whole experience rather entertaining, like one of the funnier episodes of _ It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia_. _ It’s Always Wack in Depressionville_, perhaps. At any rate, the madwoman who’d appeared at her door was completely bonkers, probably dangerous, and also the most exciting thing to happen in Soo-Min’s life, like, ever.

“I’m gonna go do homework,” she decided, which is the high-achieving high-school girl’s natural reaction to everything. “You can, like… sit on the couch.”

And at that point, she looked Missy over. The woman’s hair was standing up on all sides of her head, her skirt was torn down to her ankle, and all of her was splattered with mud and grease as well as slime that really did look extraterrestrial in origin. She seemed…

Well, she seemed really sick.

“Do you need a doctor?” Soo-Min asked.

Missy laughed for an absurdly long time. Soo-Min didn’t smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *soo-min voice* "life with depression is already so goddamn weird, you're just like, this might as well happen?"
> 
> to an extent, this story, like a bunch of doctor who episodes, hinges on a random human character. if ocs aren't your jam, that's fine; no pressure to keep reading.


	3. Chapter 3

THREE HOURS LATER.

“No,” Missy was saying impatiently, “No. That’s the_ power _ rule. You need to use the _ product _rule. 

Soo-Min stared hard at her homework. “So the answer is… infinity?”

“No, it’s six-a-x to the fifth power, plus four-a-c-x cubed, plus 2 b-x. This is basic! What are you, five?”

“I’m sixteen,” said Soo-Min, irritated. She massaged her temples, where her headache, like Missy’s impatience, was building. 

“I learned this on day one at the Academy. Day _ one. _” Missy sighed in exasperation. “Why are you not intelligent?”

“I’m sixteen,” Soo-Min repeated.

Missy pondered the girl’s tiny existence and decided that was a valid excuse. “That’s not a valid excuse,” she snapped.

Soo-Min sighed.

Missy moved her finger down the page. “And here, that’s wrong, too. You’re supposed to be deriving the outer function with respect to the inner function, not the other way around.”

“This stuff gives me nightmares,” said Soo-Min, deadpan. “I want you to know that.”

“Really?” Missy asked. “I masturbate to it.”

“Freak.”

Missy laughed. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said, turning to go.

“Hey,” Soo-Min protested, looking at the sheets of seemingly insurmountable equations, “I’m not done yet. You gotta help me.”

“I didn’t know I was your_ tutor_.”

“You said you used to be a professor.”

“I also used to be lord and master of all Earth. Your point?”

“My point. My point is,” Soo-Min inhaled carefully, then almost smiled, “I think the answer to this problem_ is _ infinity.”

“It’s not,” Missy snapped.

“Prove it. Explain to me exactly _ why _ it’s not.” She twirled a strand of hair. “You seem like the type of person who really likes to prove other people wrong.”

Missy scoffed. “Where did you get that impression?”

“Try to keep up,” Soo-Min mimicked.

“Who said that?”

“You did. So help me with the rest of this, or I kick you out of my house.”

“I’m impressed at your appearance of having actually grown a backbone--really,” Missy said languorously, “I am. But please note I could burn your house down.”

“Then we’d have something in common, right? You said your home burned away.”

Missy examined the child. “Is there something wrong with you?”

“Depression,” said Soo-Min, and dabbed.

“Got any plans to fix that?”

“Nope,” said Soo-Min, and dabbed again.

Missy could respect that. The dabbing exhibited perfect technique. She sat down on the girl’s bed, purposefully smearing dirt on the comforter. Again, Soo-Min didn’t react. Irritating.

“Where are we on Earth?” Missy demanded. “Your accent’s flat and ugly, so I’m guessing somewhere in the USA.”

“Yeah,” said Soo-Min shortly, scribbling some random exponents in the margins of her notebook and hoping that would be enough to fool her teacher into thinking she’d actually done work. “West Virginia.”

“West Virginia?” Missy looked disgusted. “I thought John Denver made that up for notes.”

“He did.” Soo-Min tapped her pencil on her desk. “You said six-a-x to the fifth power, plus four-a-c-x cubed, plus…? 

“2 b-x. You’re talking the derivative of the product of two functions multiplied together. F-of-x is a product of functions if it can be written as g-of-x multiplied by--

“I’m going to absolutely pass out if you say one more letter--”

“H-of-x, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum ad infinitum, so long as children are young and innocent and heartless, borne back ceaselessly into the past, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers and the next. _ God_, you’re slow.”

“You’re the one invading my home and quoting classic literature.”

“Meaning?”

“I dunno. Maybe you oughta be nice to me.”

“No offence,” said Missy delicately, crossing her legs and resting a hand on her knee, “But I would _ actually _rather die.”

“Go ahead and do it, tell me how it goes.” Soo-Min sat back and yawned. “I don’t mean that. Why are you here anyway?”

“I’m escaping a rather irritating man who tried to murder me.”

“I’m glad he didn’t succeed.”

“Oh, he did, he very much did; I’m dying as we speak. But we all have our flaws.” Missy leered. “Any moment now, I could explode into a brilliant beam of light. Then we’d both be in trouble.”

“Cool.” Soo-Min started shovelling textbooks back into a backpack that must have been bigger on the inside to fit all of them. “How long are you gonna stay here?”

“Long enough to actually irritate you.”

“I meant on Earth, not in my home.”

Missy actually pondered the question. “I’ll stay until I find my friend, or until he finds me. This is his favourite planet.”

“So he knows you’re here?”

Missy pursed her lips and actually considered the question. “I don’t believe so.”

“...Okay. Does he know you almost died?”

“He probably thinks I went traipsing cheerfully off to wreak mass mayhem. Which is fair; that’s usually what I’m up to.” Missy spread her hands gleefully. “Picture an agent of chaos with a gun, but replace the gun with a screwdriver, and replace the screwdriver with an umbrella, and add in time-travel. As well as copious amounts of blood.”

“Blood?” Soo-Min blinked. “You wanna borrow a pad or something?”

“What? No. No! No.” She paused, then tactfully added another “No.”

“...Okay.”

An awkward silence fell. 

Missy mused on how she had even ended up on Earth. Her assessment of the place: it was, to speak colloquially, “a dump.” Rent was high, capitalism existed, and, worst of all, the sentient inhabitants had that irksome habit called, oh, what was it? Right._ Thinking for themselves. _Almost every decent dictatorship in existence had been overthrown by people in search of idiotic notions like ‘justice’ and ‘peace.’ Earth was so horrific it didn’t bear thinking about.

Naturally, she was thinking about it. The ship she’d been killed on had come from Mondas, but Mondas was an Earth clone, meaning the escape pod’s default settings took her to the nearest planet matching Mondas’s description, ergo the crash landing in the middle of… 

Soo-Min cleared her throat, shattering Missy’s thoughts. “You wanna call your friend? You can borrow my phone.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“But you need his help.”

Missy sat up straight. “No, I don’t.”

“But you just said--”

“I don’t need his help.” Seeing Soo-Min’s confusion, she exhaled sharply. “Besides, he hates me.”

“Your friend hates you?”

“Well,” said Missy, “In his defence, I hate him too.”

“But… you’re… friends?”

“Yes.” Missy looked off to the side. “‘It’s--”

“A long and very complicated story, I’m sure,” said Soo-Min dryly. “Fortunately, I’m too depressed to care.”

When Missy didn’t respond, Soo-Min actually looked at her. The woman was staring down at her hands, one of which appeared to be… glowing. And her eyes were shining.

Soo-Min stepped away.

“I’m not crying,” said Missy suddenly. “I mean, I am, but I just--I just,” she flapped her hand through the air, “I just do that now. It’s like allergies. I’m allergic to your entire planet. I’m allergic to stupid people. Let’s--let’s go back to your idiot numbers, all right?”

“Sure,” said Soo-Min, digging the brutalised math notebook out of her backpack and handing it over. Missy took it, held it between her hands (which were no longer glowing, which made Soo-Min wonder whether or not depression could induce hallucinations, which in turn made her wonder whether or not this entire day had been real). Missy stared at the equations vacantly, flipped through the notebook with growing distress. “I can’t do this,” she said, and put it aside.

“That’s okay,” said Soo-Min, swallowing her disappointment affably. “I can’t either.”

“It’s so simple,” Missy burst out. “I should be able to--” she looked down at her hand again. “Not now,” she hissed.

She hissed. At her hand.

Well, Soo-Min rationalised, Depression makes everyone do weird shit.

“You’re depressed too, then?” she asked, folding her arms.

“No,” said Missy, “Absolutely not. I’m a Time-Lord--"

“You’re a _ crime-lord_?!”

“A Time-Lord,” she snapped. “Well, both. Well, Time-Lady. Gender, you know.”

“Actually, I don’t know. Still sorta questioning things.”

“Treat gender like an ancient civilisation and,” Missy snapped her fingers, “Blow it up.”

“What?”

“If you don’t like your gender, kill yourself and regenerate as a new one, see if it suits you better. It’s what I did.”

“That’s, um, nice. But I don’t think I’m gonna take such a drastic measure. So sorry to my depression, but I do intend on staying alive.”

Missy raised an eyebrow.

“Unless, of course, the random stranger in my bedroom decides to kill me.”

Missy nodded approval. “Your species will discard the notion of gender anyway in a couple centuries,” she said kindly. “I wouldn’t worry.”

“It’s gonna take_ that long_?!” Soo-Min practically shrieked.

“No,” Missy reflected, “It’ll take longer. I said centuries, I meant millennia. Sorry about that.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Soo-Min. “Alright. Fine. Tell me more about this friend of yours.”

“There’s not much to say, really,” said Missy loftily. “I hated him, and that killed me. I loved him, and that killed me, too.”

“You loved him?”

“Absolutely.”

“Sounds like he’s more than a friend.”

“He is.”

“A boyfriend?”

“Never.” Missy’s lip twisted. “Unfortunately.”

“Rip,” observed Soo-Min.

“I would have absolutely railed him if he’d asked,” she said matter-of-factly, “But by the time we even _kissed_, he was married.”

“He was--he--what?”

“As I said, there’s not much to say.”

“Was he your best friend?”

Missy visibly shuddered. “Neither of us could bear that. No, his best friends have always been humans. Pathetic, really. I don’t know what he sees in you mewling lot.”

Soo-Min was gratified. There’s nothing like the meaningless approval of a stranger. “Maybe we have something you don’t,” she suggested.

Missy turned cold blue eyes on her. “What could humans possibly have that Time-Lords don’t?”

Soo-Min thought a moment. “The ability to chill?”

Missy scowled.

“Hey,” said Soo-Min. “Don’t frown; it makes you look insane.”

Missy pouted. “I _ want _ to look insane.”

“Yes, but it’s _ un_sexy insane, not _ sexy _ insane. You want Jennifer Check, not the Joker. Tell me more about your friend.”

Missy cheered up marginally. “He’s brilliant,” she began. “Stone-cold brilliant. He’s almost as mad as me. We were going to see every star in the universe—” she stopped. “But, well.”

Soo-Min leaned against the wall. “What happened?”

“I fucked it up.”

“Was it an I-said-something-I-didn’t-mean-to-say fuckup, or an I-got-the-directions-to-Alpha-Centauri-wrong fuckup, or an I-took-something-that-belonged-to-you-thinking-it-was-mine fuckup, or--”

“An accidental-arson fuckup.

“Accidental.”

“It was!” Missy bristled. “At first it was. It really was! At first.”

“Was it fun?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say you’re sorry?”

“Of course not.”

“S’not too late, though,” Soo-Min observed. “Anyway,” she went on, unmissably sarcastic, “What you’ve got _ definitely _sounds like romance.”

Missy turned to her. “Would you know?”

“Uh,” said Soo-Min honestly, “No, I’ve never been in love. People usually, well. Think I’m eccentric. Weird.”

Missy rested her chin on her hand. “Eccentric? You? Preposterous.”

“What! You think I’m weird? I’m _ not _ being weird.”

“You’re talking to an age-old cosmic entity.”

“That’s better than talking to myself,” Soo-Min retorted, before realising that didn’t exactly help the case she was trying to make. “Another question,” she said quickly, trying to change the subject. “Are you actually evil?”

“Am I actually evil?” Missy repeated. “Duh.”

Soo-Min raised an eyebrow. Well, she tried to. She gave it a good effort.

“Think about it,” Missy went on. “I mean, I’m not _ moral_.”

“No shit. I mean, you’re, like, all murder-y. But you did help me with my calculus--”

“Out of boredom alone.”

“Okay, fine, out of boredom alone. Still, you did it! And you haven’t killed me yet.”

“You are,” Missy admitted grudgingly, “Entertaining.”

“Thank you! Thank you. That’s very kind. See, you’re kind! Maybe you don’t have to be ‘moral.’ Just kind!”

“Just kind,” Missy echoed sourly. “Maybe that’s why the Doctor likes you all so much. You mimic him.” She scoffed. “As if someone can be just _ be kind. _”

“I don’t know how to say this, but, ah, you… can.”

“Can what?”

“Can just… be kind.”

“Um, _ yuck_!”

Soo-Min spread her arms. “Fine, your call! But who’s the Doctor?”

“My friend.”

“_That _ friend?”

“Yes, that friend.”

“You call him ‘The Doctor’?!”

“Yes.”

“Doctor whom?”

“...I’m not sure how to answer that.”

“So you’re in love with him, and you call him ‘The Doctor’?”

“Yes.”

“Kinky.”

Missy smiled again. It was probably the type of smile sharks give minnows. Soo-Min wasn’t impressed by it. “I want to find him more than anything else,” Missy said, with the air of someone who was withholding, rather than confessing, a secret. “Soo-Min, what do you want more than anything else?”

“Death,” Soo-Min said, and dabbed a third time. “Actually, a haircut. And to pass calc.”

“I can probably help you with two of the three,” said Missy, brandishing one of Soo-Min’s very sharp pencils and aiming it at either Soo-Min’s notebook or her throat.

“The ambiguity of that gesture,” Soo-Min pointed out, “Is intense.”

“Intentionally.”

Soo-Min took a step back, reconsidered the move, and stepped forward again. She squared her shoulders. “Pencil stabbing?” she asked in her most withering tone. “What kind of a way is that to kill someone? It’s got no finesse, none.” She plucked the offending weapon out of Missy’s hand. “It’s just a pointy stick. You can do better.”

“I conquered Skaro with a pointy stick,” Missy informed her, but her hearts weren’t in it. The script had been flipped, and she did not appreciate it. It was time to recover lost ground. And her knife. She pulled it from her skirts, noted that it was still bloody. “Would you prefer a blade?”

“You’re deadass giving me a preference?”

“Oh, your ass _ will _ be dead. Dead as the rest of you! Dead as a fish on a slab any second now--” she stopped abruptly. “Oh, that’s trash. I’ve used that metaphor before.”

“Why does your voice do that?”

“Dear God, so many questions.” Missy rested her forehead on her fingers. “Do what?”

“It sort of--shrieks. Up and down, catching on words, like you’re some sort of--”

“Queen of Evil?”

“Sure. You have either the butchest voice ever or you’re a half-octave away from full-on squealing.”

Missy regarded her flatly. “And what about it?”

“So is it a Scottish thing, or a space thing, or an insanity thing, or--”

“Oi, I’ve just been executed,” Missy cut in. “_ Again_. Show a little respect.”

Soo-Min didn’t retaliate this time. “I’m really scared right now,” she said suddenly. 

“I’d hope so,” Missy oozed.

“Yeah. I’ve been kind of talking to prevent you from trying to kill me, but I’m just standing around scared. And that’s stupid, spending the last few seconds of your life so frightened. So I kinda… made my peace with it. With dying.”

Missy was intrigued. She came toward Soo-Min, tilted her chin up with the palm of her hand to examine the fear in her eyes. “That fast?”

“I’ve only been alive sixteen years, and I’ve been depressed for three of them. There’s not a lot I’ve done, so there’s… not a lot to revisit. If you want to kill me, go ahead,” she said, “Cuz I’ve run out of questions. Um, aim for the jugular, if you can. I’d rather have it be fast.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” said Missy, and put her knife away. “Really, I don’t.” And all at once, she sagged.

Soo-Min, spurred by some base instinctual response of ‘help,’ moved toward her. Missy sat up with a snap, holding the knife out again. “I’m just a bit sleepy,” she asserted, eyes flashing. “Please maintain a minimum separation of three feet and keep your major arteries out of reach. There’s always,” she coughed lightly, “Temptation.”

Soo-Min was really certain at least one of Missy’s fingers was glowing again, and was really_ really _ certain that that wasn’t good. 

She stayed back, but didn’t wipe the concern from her face. “What happened to you?” she demanded.

“I thought you were out of questions.”

“Nope, never. What happened to you?”

Missy didn’t answer. Soo-Min sighed, folded herself up, and sat down hard on her bedroom floor. “Three or four times now,” she started, “You’ve mentioned someone killing you, or trying to, or--something. Is that…” she pursed her lips, flashed a guarded look at the woman on her bed, “True?”

“I _ thought _ I’d be the one person in the universe completely safe from the Master,” Missy muttered.

“What?”

“I was _ good_,” she snarled.

Soo-Min flinched.

“I was good,” she insisted. “Oh, it was ludicrous and I _ regret _ it, I’ll do my damndest to undo it, but I _ was _ good; just this once, you _ stupid _ human, I made a choice and everybody _ lived_.”

“Uh-huh. Who’s the Master?”

“I am.”

Soo-Min tried to put two and two together, which was a fair bit easier than calculus. “Your friend is the Doctor, and you’re the Master?”

“Yes. He has a doctorate; he is the Doctor. I have a Master’s degree, so there.”

“What’s your degree… in?” 

“Cosmic science.”

“What’s cosmic science?”

“_Science _ of the _ cosmos_, baby. A hybrid of astrophysics, chaos theory, sensitive dependence, fractals, nonlinear algebra, and temporal geometry.”

“So you being called ‘the Master’ has nothing to do with you razing civilisations and taking over the Earth and has everything to do with, like, going to classes?”

“Razing civilisations and taking over the Earth are my _ recreation_, not my _ occupation_. You make me sound so despicable, human child.”

“My name’s Soo-Min.”

“Don’t care. Human child, people like you are always accusing me of doing things like ‘committing murder’ and ‘facilitating mass genocide.’ But I would like to note that for it to be a ‘mass’ genocide, you have to kill at _ least _ a million people, and my most recent victims only total to two hundred forty six.” She swallowed heavily, brought a hand to her back as if she had been wounded there. “Ah. Two-hundred forty seven.”

“Seriously,” said Soo-Min, “Are you okay?”

“No,” Missy fumed, “I’m not ‘okay.’ But I should be even _ more _ not okay.”

“What do you mean?”

Missy didn’t seem to hear. “I wasn’t supposed to regenerate, but I will. My death, by my hand, I survived it.”

“How is that… bad?”

“Because it is _ bad_.” Her voice went wry, then softened. “Because good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward. Where you stand is where you fall.” She broke off. “I should have fallen.”

There was a long silence.

“But maybe,” Soo-Min interjected, then shook her head.

“No, continue,” urged Missy, her thumb on her knife again. If people go on speaking while they’re stabbed in the throat, she reflected, The rush of blood they make is so much prettier.

“It’s dumb.”

“Of course it will be dumb; _ you’re _ dumb. I want to hear it.”

“I’m thinking--”

“Now _ there’s _ a shock--”

“--About that darkest pit thing. Yeah,” said Soo-Min, standing and beginning to pace around the room. “Yeah, okay. So you’re bad, but then you turned good and then died, and you think you should have stayed dead.”

Missy let go of the knife. “That,” she informed the child, “Is beyond stupid. That is insipid. And inane. And in_ sane_. And simplistic. And--”

“Kinda true?”

A grudging response. “Yes.”

“Someone hurt you. Maybe it was you who hurt you, ‘the Master,’ whatever, fine. And it happened because you did a good thing, with no-one watching you.”

“Yes.”

“And now you kind of think maybe you wanna be dead, because the fact that you’re alive means you didn’t really sacrifice anything at all.”

The “yes” was reluctant this time, but there.

“Okay,” said Soo-Min. “Yeah, okay. Okay. Okay!”

“_Can _ you say anything other than--”

“No, no, hear me out!”

Missy glared at her. “_Okay_.”

“Maybe that’s also when good comes to you.”

“What?”

Soo-Min bounced on her toes. “Yeah, exactly!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Now who’s stupid?”

“Ah, _ you_, still! This is dithering, this is blathering, this is _ un_-streamlined, this is a waste of time and for someone who quite literally has always had unlimited time, that is saying something--”

“Missy, _ shut the fuck up_!”

And the Master, who in all the centuries of their existence had never been told to shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up.

“That’s when good _ happens_!”

“What?”

“In the final hour, in the deepest pit, when you don’t hope for it, when you don’t look for it, when you don’t even think you _ deserve _ it, something _ good!_”

“What?” Missy asked again, this time much more faintly.

Soo-Min broke into a broad smile. It felt strange on her face, like the sensation of--not that she’d know it--the light of an alien sun. “Maybe you being alive is something good!” She scrambled back three steps. “Don’t kill me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this now has an [ILLUSTRATION](https://aziraphalesbian.tumblr.com/post/187723565023/missy-and-a-random-human-girl-an-illustration-for)!


	4. Chapter 4

The Doctor was not having a very good day.

It was strange. She ought to be happy. This regeneration was, she knew, very happy.

This regeneration specifically.

She thought of them almost like separate people; these memories belong to this one, these words, these wounds, these wonders. And maybe that was inorganic, the compartmentalisation, and maybe it would have been healthier to evaluate herself as she does history: not as tableaus but as a tapestries, the same threads in different colours continuing on and on.

After all, your past deserves to be remembered by your future.

But it’s fine. All good.

Usually.

It’s why she won’t return to Sarah-Jane or Ace or Martha, or, even if she could, Rose Tyler. It’s easier to think of someone else doing the actual losing. Looking in the mirror, you see someone new. Someone smiling.

The TARDIS is empty except for her now. She’s golden like Gallifrey, looks more alive than she ever has. You too, the machine might say if she could.

The Doctor folds her hands, rests her forehead on top of them, sitting down with her back against the base of the now-familiar console. She’s had this regeneration some time but has never truly relaxed with it. It’s time to find out who she is when she’s alone. To really discover the fifteenth regeneration, the hearts of the thirteenth doctor.

What does she know already? She lives, she loves, she hopes, she’s changed. 

Those are the good things.

What else does she know?

Well. 

The thirteenth doctor almost never talks about her past. She’s made new friends, the first people to help her, and she rolls with them, keeps them. Clings to them, you might say. She doesn’t shout at them, doesn’t berate them, doesn’t allow any conflict between them whatsoever, barely even gives them the opportunity to do something she might disagree with. She doesn’t do anything that might make them leave. She doesn’t talk about Donna or Amy or Jack. Or River.

She doesn’t cry. 

She thinks about them, though, all those old faces. She treasures every memory, even as she packs them away. It’s like folding up her old clothing, the suits and scarves and sweaters that will never fit again. She’s been the man who regrets, the man who forgets, and now she’s the woman who accepts.

At least, she’s trying to be.

All glory is painful. Regeneration is a violent act; it burns up every living cell. It is so easy to pretend she’s been fourteen different people, because physically, she has been. Mentally, she’s the same old Doctor she ever was.

All time runs simultaneously. Under 2019, it’s 1819, 1419, 19. So she’s still the first doctor, still the second, still the third. They are out there in their timestream, running fast, laughing hard, and rescuing.

The Master’s out there, too.

Missy.

The one person almost all of her has had in common. The person she has lost more than anyone else.

She misses her acutely. Every diseased planet, every disaster, every distress call she encounters could have Missy as its cause. She’s out there, she  _ must _ be, and the more the Doctor ponders it, the more something she almost never feels comes bubbling up.

Anger.

She rent her hearts for Missy; she had saved her, guarded her, treasured her, and, when she tested her, was failed by her. She had gone down to her knees and held her, kissed her, and pleaded with her; she had bared her soul to say Stand with me, _ stay _ with me; I believe you can change.

She had been wrong because Missy had been more wrong.

Either that or Missy was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> might be a while until the next update i'm sorry! but please enjoy this. comments & predictions very very welcome!


	5. Chapter 5

Missy was not dead. She was eating ice-cream. It was Soo-Min’s second helping, and Missy’s fifth.

“I joined the circus,” Missy was wailing. “The _ circus_, human child. The circus! By which I mean the court of King John. But also a literal circus; I joined that much earlier. By which I mean later, by which I mean, ah,” she sniffled, “Clowns. Speaking of which, did you know the Doctor used to wear celery in his lapel?”

“...No?”

“He did, he really did, and he looked a positive nightmare, all red and khaki and striped like that, done up for me like a peppermint sweet. Oh, I could have eaten him _ up_, he looked so young. He beat me in a swordfight. A literal one.”

Soo-Min pondered how one could have a _ non_-literal swordfight, realised the answer, and choked. “Great,” she managed.

“And then--or maybe it was before--I was an--oh, what was I? I’ve been a human, a Trakenite, a Time-Lord, a woman, a man, a few things in between, a doll-maker, a _ Californian_, a clone, a stream of oozing goo--”

“There’s no need to say ‘man’ twice.”

Missy stared. “I don’t get it.”

“The joke is that men are streams of oozing goo.”

“Oh! I thought that was Californians.”

Soo-Min snorted. “Them too. You’re funny.”

“I am?” For a moment Missy looked so delighted Soo-Min half-expected her to applaud. It only lasted a moment, though, before an odd sort of weariness replaced it. “Oh, I suppose I am. Being called ‘funny’ by a human, is this what makes me happy now? Don’t answer that.” She sighed theatrically. “But I do have a question for you.”

“For me?”

“No,” Missy said witheringly, “For the _ other _ idiot in the room.”

“So, for yourself then?”

There was a huge silence. Missy stopped with the ice-cream spoon halfway to her mouth.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Soo-Min. “You’re gonna to kill me for that.”

“No,” said Missy in a voice that had gone soft from wonder. “No. That was--that was--” She cleared her throat and put down the spoon, “Miraculous.”

“Really?”

None of my inferiors have _ ever _ dared to speak to me that way before.” She gave herself a self-congratulatory smile, sharpened it to a point, and turned it on the girl. “It was cute. Now know your place: I am your Master.”

“Okay,” said Soo-Min. “Okay, seriously, you’ve gotta stop calling yourself that.”

“What?”

“‘Your Master.’ Like… God, okay, going around and telling people you’re somebody’s _ master _ is like--shit, man, the connotations of that word, _ especially _ here? It’s a level of evil I don’t even think you’re on.”

“Oh,” Missy said when she realised. “You’re right. I would never. The only race I’d enslave is the human race.”

“...Great?”

“I am a fan of indiscriminate slaughter,” she clarified. “But only _ indiscriminate _ slaughter. Indiscriminatory. Non-discriminatory?” she snapped her fingers impatiently. “What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Not racist?”

“Oh, but I am racist; I despise the Slitheen. Equal-opportunity death on Earth, that’s the term.”

“That’s more than one term.”

“No it isn’t.”

Soo-Min looked off to the side like she was on The Office.

“Is it better to refer to yourself as somebody’s mistress?” Missy asked.

Soo-Min almost choked a second time.

“What?” Missy looked offended. “Tell me, is it better or not?”

“Yeah,” Soo-Min replied, trying to suppress a massive giggle. “Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Please please _ please _ go around introducing yourself as somebody’s mistress. Oh my god, please do that. To everyone you--” she burst out laughing-- “Meet. Please. God, yes, I would love to see their faces--yes,” she said, fully laughing now, “Say you’re ‘the doctor’s mistress.’ I’m begging you to say that. To literally anyone. I would fucking--” she brought a hand to her mouth, “I would fucking lose it, Missy, if you did that. Oh my god. In fucking West Virginia. Christian-ass West fucking Virginia. They’d-- they’d fucking--” she almost started to cry from mirth. Finally, she composed herself, folding her hands in her lap. She cleared her throat, eyes still a little teary. “Yes.”

“Wow,” said Missy in a perfect imitation of Owen Wilson’s voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever made someone laugh that hard before. I don’t think I’ve ever made someone laugh before.” She peered at Soo-Min’s eyes. “Does it always get someone this wet?”

And at that question, Soo-Min actually officially lost it, and laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> missy: i've only had soo-min for three hours but if anything happened to her i'd kill everyone in this room and then myself (again)  
soo-min: i'm about to end this alien's whole career
> 
> obviously the dialogue is meant to be funny but i really don't mean to trivialise anyone's experiences with racism, so please tell me if i overstep. thank you.


	6. Chapter 6

What the Doctor does, when she’s alone, is very human. She grieves.

Most people, as soon as they relax, will slip into a stoic and unreasonable sadness, as if that is the natural state of affairs and joy just a distraction. This is something that has plagued the Doctor since the Time War. The TARDIS saw many nights of a broken man in a big black jacket uselessly slamming his head into a wall. Attempting numbness is rarely successful, but oddly addictive. Healing, real healing, hurts.

The loss of Gallifrey was an extirpation, an eradication; an extermination, if you like. To live without a home is to be untethered. For an astronaut, to be untethered is to spin out into space and die. To run out of, in order, oxygen and hope. Invariably.

The saving of Gallifrey was a miracle. The separation from it is a wound. A wound she shares with just one other person, but that one other person is just one more loss.

She takes the TARDIS to Sheffield to find her tethers: Ryan, Yaz, and Graham.


	7. Chapter 7

“Why didn’t you hear my spaceship crash?” Missy asked.

Soo-Min thought a moment. “Uh… I was playing music.”

Missy lit up. “You like music? I like music.” She belted out a an earsplitting, off-key note. “What song?”

“Uh, _ The Sounds of Silence_.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Come on, everyone’s heard ‘Hello Darkness, My Old Friend.’”

“I,” Missy said imperiously, “Only have one ‘old friend.’ And I only play ‘bops.’ Like ‘Hey Mickey’ by Toni Basil, ‘I Can’t Decide’ by the Scissor Sisters, and ‘Symphony Number 5 in C Minor, Opus 67,’ otherwise known as ‘Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony’ by--”

“Lemme guess, Beethoven?”

“Yes. _ Classics. _The best music your species has ever come up with.”

“If you think those songs are the best songs humans have ever come up with, you haven’t heard_ Tainted Love_. Besides, ‘The Sounds of Silence’ _ is _ a classic.” Still, she couldn’t deny that those other songs slapped, especially Beethoven’s Fifth. “Fine. Siri, play Toni Basil.”

Siri, apparently a bitch, decided to play Toni Basil’s _ Time After Time_, but because the lyrics of the chorus were “Time after time, you pretend but you don’t listen / Time after time, you arrive another person,” Missy shut that shit down real quick. No day is a good day to have your ass handed to you by a pop song. She insisted on something better, so ‘Tainted Love’ was picked, because, according to Soo-Min, “That’s depression, babe.”

The song was nearing its 19th repeat when there was a knock downstairs.

The human and the Time-Lady both turned toward the door at once. It was a touching, if accidental, moment of interspecies solidarity.

“I’ll get that,” said Soo-Min, smile vanishing. “It’s my mom.”

She stopped the music, stood up, and brushed her hair out of her eyes, anxiety plain on her young, round face.

“You don’t get along, do you?” Missy asked. “You and your Mummy-dearest. I’m bored; want me to kill her?”

Soo-Min flinched. “No,” she said coldly. “It’s fine. She’s fine; I’m fine.” She stepped to her window, peered out and down at the dark-haired, middle-aged woman busy unlocking the front door. “She’s coming in. You oughta hide.”

“I’m a killer, not a coward. After fleeing to the end of the universe as you know it and using a stolen Gallifreyan chameleon arch in the form of a fob watch to transform myself into a human and escape the Last Great Time War between the Time-Lords and the Daleks--”

“Not even gonna ask what any of that means--”

“--I don’t_ hide _ anymore.”

Soo-Min, nonplussed, shrugged. “All right, stick around, but I gotta explain you somehow.”

“Say you hired a tutor,” Missy suggested placidly. "To help you with your homework."

“Soo-Min spun around. “That actually might work!”

“It’s also not exactly lying,” Missy pointed out, then grimaced. “I _ like _ lying.”

“If you’re gonna pretend to be my tutor, you really need to get out of those clothes.”

Missy gasped. “What’s wrong with these clothes?”

“They look like they’re from the nineteen-forties and they’re covered in alien grime.”

“It’s for the aesthetic, human child! The _ aesthetic_, do you understand?” 

“Mm, not really--”

“Soo-Min!” came a shrill, angry voice from downstairs.

Soo-Min sighed. “Yes, Mom?!” she hollered back.

“Who crashed a spaceship in the middle of the street?!”

Soo-Min glared at Missy. Missy made a _ who, me? _ face, so Soo-Min stuck out her tongue. “I’m going downstairs,” she informed the Time-Lady. “I’ll tell Mom you’re a tutor, and we’ll hope she’s tired enough from small-town-lawyer-ing that she believes me. Come down and introduce yourself when you’re…” She scrunched up her nose, thinking of a word that might actually get through to Missy. “...Presentable.”

Missy did actually look impressed. “Will-do,” she said glibly, plucking a piece of lint off her coat. “Run along, then. Explain that there’s a very attractive psychopath upstairs.”

“Blargh,” said Soo-Min, squaring her shoulders. “I will.” She put a hand on the doorknob, prepared to leave the room, then turned back one more time.

She fixed Missy with an almost pleading stare. 

“What,” Missy asked, feigning disinterest.

“Don’t get me in trouble with my mom,” Soo-Min said. For a moment, it looked like she wanted to say something else, something bigger, but she just swallowed and added, “She’s strict.”

_ Strict. _ For a moment, an image--cruel faces, gold collars, the Untempered Schism--flashed through Missy’s mind, and she looked away. “I understand,” she said quietly, and she did.


	8. Chapter 8

There are certain colours the Doctor will never see again. Certain smells she’ll never smell, certain sounds she’ll never hear. Certain sensations she’d know, blind or deaf or dreaming, that only exist on one planet. Anything even reminding her of it used to punch her, pierce her, give her vertigo and tremors, a sudden painful clarity that would pound in her ears like the four-beat rhythm of home. _ Gallifrey, Gallifrey, Gallifrey, _ a galloping word, a rhythm, a race run through rolling red fields. She remembers the night of the meteor storm, the most beautiful hour she’d ever spent: lying back on the grass, eyes wide and astonished as the sky above her was dancing with lights--purple, green, and brilliant yellow. Brilliant, brilliant yellow.

It’s deeper in her than her face, than her name, and she is alone with the weight and the whisper of it, the mind-numbing, almost brainless _ force _ with which she misses it, every night.

But it’s alright, she tells herself, and it is. The planet is safe. She can honour the memories of it now; she can revisit them, pluck them out like old photographs. They no longer smoke at the corners with guilt; they can’t burn her like they used to. Gallifrey is gone, but it’s Gallifrey _ is_, not Gallifrey _ was_, and that’s everything. Lost but not demolished, the planet will heal. And until she can return, the TARDIS arcs above her like a citadel, splinters into colour like sunlight against glass. Something old, something new; one more piece of the past. Her spaceship, her timeship, her ghost monument. It’s beautiful but different; it’s bolder. Cheery, in a way it really hasn’t been before. And, though she’s asked it, prodded it, cajoled it, flattered it, stroked it, shouted at it, and dramatically pulled every single lever on the console, it’s most definitely _ not _ taking her to Sheffield.


	9. Chapter 9

“Well,” said Mrs. Ko, middle-aged small town lawyer and mother to Soo-Min, in a tone she probably_ thought _ was elegant and confidential, “If you invited some stranger into the house--which we will discuss the consequences for later, because honestly, Soo-Min, it’s unacceptable--at least it isn’t a man.”

“Oi!” yelled Missy from above them, descending the staircase and presenting herself grandly, “I used to be a man!”

Mrs. Ko whipped around.

“Yes,” Missy went on. “Was quite good at it, too.” Taking in the woman’s look of growing horror, she folded her arms and pouted. “What? Would you like me to pull out the pride flag? I can! I’ve gone to the parades. On several planets, actually.”

Soo-Min stared at Missy in absolute shock. The good news was that Missy was wearing new clothes. The bad news was that she was wearing Mrs. Ko’s clothes.

Mrs. Ko seemed to be fixating on something else, however. “You’re one of those… those…”

Missy’s voice turned tart. “One of those _ what_?”

“Get out of my house,” said Mrs. Ko faintly.

“Ooh, transphobic, are we? Soo-Min, kill this clown.”

Soo-Min ignored that last comment, looking as though she craved the sweet embrace of death. “Mom!” she said, scandalised, “She’s a trans woman, not an _ alien_!”

“Oh, I absolutely am an alien,” said Missy, turning a thin-lipped and humourless smile on a bewildered Mrs. Ko. “I’m centuries old. I have two hearts. I’ve lived fourteen lives. My home, Gallifrey, is 30,000 lightyears away. It’s lost to me, and I cope with that by killing people. I’m dying. It’s karma. And funsies!”

“Missy,” said Soo-Min, “You had one job.”

“Yes!” Missy spun in a circle. “Tutoring. I’m this delightful idiot’s tutor.” She grasped the girl by her shoulders and shook her back and forth. “Smile, Soo-Min!”

“I will not.”

“She will not. That’s okay!” Missy released her and stalked toward Mrs. Ko. “I’m also completely ruthless,” she admitted, losing none of her cheery demeanour. “This girl let me into her house because I threatened her. And now I’m threatening you.” 

“Missy--”

“No,” said Missy, stopping Soo-Min with a single look. She turned back to Mrs. Ko and fixed her with an unnatural smile.

“I come from a place where academic performance dictated one’s entire future,” she said. “A place where adults choked the life out of their children. In short, life not so different from that of this little human spawn. Do you understand me?”

“By ‘spawn,’” Mrs. Ko managed, “Do you mean--”

“Your daughter, yes. Like her, I grew up sad and stifled and scared because of the treatment of people like you.” She lifted her chin. “This is what it turned me into.”

Mrs. Ko backed up three steps.

“Well,” Missy reflected, “Not really; all the murders I did are on me. Including my own, oddly enough. Point is,” her voice turned chilling, “Do you want your child to be kind?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Ko, starting to tremble. “Of course.”

“Then be kind to her,” Missy snapped. She stepped back toward Soo-Min and grabbed her again, lifting her stiletto from her pocket and laying it casually against the girl’s throat. “Or she’ll become the kind of person who would do this.”


	10. Chapter 10

Soo-Min’s first thought was that the blade was ice-cold, and she stiffened, leaning back. The fear of death--resignation to it, really--came a moment later. Fortunately, it only lasted a second, because Missy, once she’d gotten her intended reaction of abject terror from Mrs. Ko, took the blade away from the base of Soo-Min’s neck. She gave Mrs. Ko a peculiar narrow stare and stepped toward her again. Before the woman could react, Missy had caught her chin in an iron grip and was staring, fixated, into her eyes. 

Mrs. Ko swayed on her feet and, abruptly, crumpled to the floor. Missy stepped back, dropped her stiletto with a clatter, and wiped her hands down her skirt. “Ocular hypnotism,” she said to Soo-Min by way of explanation. “Mind control with flair! It’s one of my oldest talents. Made great use of it in the 1970s; people were more weak-willed then. Or maybe it was just the drugs they used. Did you know, a solid three-quarters of UNIT soldiers were perpetually stoned?”

Soo-Min massaged her neck.

“Your mum will think it’s a bad dream,” Missy went on, staring derisively at Mrs. Ko’s prone form and prodding her torso with her toe. “A blade pressed to her daughter’s neck; no mother deserves to see that.”

“How considerate,” said Soo-Min.

“She’ll remember the fear, though. I’m good at that.”

“How thoughtful.”

“I wasn’t actually going to kill you,” Missy cooed. “Just so you know.”

“How selfless.”

“I’ve started to experience regrettable sensations like ‘guilt’ and ‘torment,’ and it’s _ unbelievably _ inconvenient for me, so I’m not going to use the remains of this life induce any more.”

“How polite.”

Missy practically glowed. “Didn’t I frighten you?”

“Oh,” said Soo-Min, swallowing hard, “Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

Soo-Min gave Missy a curious stare. “Hey,” she began, then stopped.

Missy, who was staring, pleased, at the passed-out Mrs. Ko, turned to Soo-Min with raised eyebrows. “Hm?”

“Are you really,” Soo-Min said haltingly, “You know. Dying?”

“Yes,” Missy said stiffly.

“And were you—murdered?”

“It happens to the best of us.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, dear. I_ was _ very much murdered. Those proverbial stables have turned.”

“Tables,” Soo-Min suggested. “Who killed you?”

“My past self, I suppose you could say.”

“Your past self travelled forward in time and killed you.”

“Yes.”

“Then—” Soo-Min tried to think of the right way to word it, “Then shouldn’t you—”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t you have, you know… remembered doing it?”

Missy went quiet for a while.

“It’s complicated,” she finally said. She was still flippant, but this time, some of the lightness in her voice rang false. “I remembered enough that when I saw his face, my first reaction was--what’s that emotion? It’s the one I usually _ cause_…" she trailed off. "Oh! Yes. Fear. I don’t remember everything; I can’t. But, being the unscrupulously clever Time-Lady I am, I did put some pieces together.”

“How many?”

Missy didn’t answer. Soo-Min sighed and reworded her question. “Like what?”

“Waking up in an elevator with my laser screwdriver emptied, meaning I’d just fired it full-blast. The familiarity of my new face when I first looked in a mirror. Cybermen lingering in the back of my mind. Then I spent nearly a thousand years in prison—”

“Nearly a thousand years?!” Soo-Min exclaimed. “How did you not go completely bananas?”

“I already was completely bananas, thank you.”

“What did you _ do _ in there?”

“A lot of nothing.” Missy said acridly. “The Doctor wouldn’t give me a particle accelerator _ or _my own miniature horse.”

“You spent nearly a thousand years in prison!”

“Yes. In a vault.”

“And did you think about it when you were in there? You dying?”

“Why,” Missy asked, “Do you even care?”

“Because—Missy!”

“What?”

“Because—Jesus, fuck!”

“What?!”

“If you remembered it—or even if you just faintly _ guessed _ it—you—” Soo-Min spluttered, “You had a thousand years to put it together, to figure it out, to dread it. Your death! A _ thousand years!_”

“Yes,” Missy confirmed, without a shred of amusement. 

“So did you? Figure it out?”

“Why,” Missy repeated, “Do you even care?”

“Because if you did figure it out, then while you were in prison--”

“In the vault,” Missy corrected.

“In the vault,” Soo-Min continued, clearly worked up, “If you remembered it or guessed it, you had to decide, after centuries of being evil, if you were finally gonna do the right thing—”

“Yes—”

“_Knowing it would kill you if you did!_”

A weary silence.

“Tell me I’m right, Missy!”

“You sound like me.”

“Tell me I’m right!”

“You have sound logic--for a human,” she admitted.

“That is,” said Soo-Min, after a while, “Quite frankly, one of the bravest things I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s only true if I remembered it or guessed it.”

“So,” Soo-Min demanded, “Did you?”

“I knew my past self had a loaded laser screwdriver,” said Missy abstractly, “And I know my own penchant for shooting people in the back.” Her eyes went slightly glassy, her voice dropped in volume, and one of her hands started glowing again. “The Doctor and I loved each other when we were kids, you know. It bothers both of us.”

“Both of you?”

“Him because he can’t stand the thought of loving anyone evil, and me because I can’t stand the thought of loving anyone at all.” Her tone solidified a little. “I hate everyone in this room.”

“That includes yourself,” Soo-Min observed.

Missy raised an eyebrow.

“Oof.”

Missy, fully roused now, clenched her fist until the glowing went away. “I want to kill everyone, he wants me to kill no-one, and he won’t meet me in the middle and let me kill _ someone! _ The gall of him!” She, too, was getting wound up. “And then he says I’m too evil to compromise with, that the middle ground between genocide and equal rights is murder—which is unacceptable for some reason—and he can’t ever let me win, but I’ve heard from outside sources that he’ll turn right around and say shit like, ‘The laws of time are mine and they will obey me,’ to which I’d reply, ‘Gallifrey, come get your mans because he’s clearly having a breakdown,’ and I just don’t understand it! All I want is for him to stand with me and help me conquer the universe and then kiss me on the mouth. Is that so much to ask? What do you think?”

“I think,” Soo-Min said sagely, “You two should just go to therapy.”

“What’s therapy?”

“That explains so much. Hey, when will my mom wake up?”

“Anywhen between an hour and, hm, twenty-eight days.”

“Missy, she can’t go without food and water that long!”

“That sounds like a her problem.”

“Yeah, that _ you _ caused!”

“I was trying to_ help _ you,” she said defensively.

“Yeah, well, thanks for trying, but--”

“I was trying to help you,” Missy repeated. She sounded as if she couldn’t believe it. “To help. You! To _ help_!”

“...And?”

“I dunno,” said Missy. “Seemed important a second ago. Anyway!” she spun in a circle again, “I--” she went silent. She had just heard a very ancient, and very familiar, scraping-wheezing noise.

Soo-Min heard it too, and dashed to her living room window, plastering herself against it and staring out onto the road. After a moment, she turned back to Missy, looking perplexed. 

“What is it?” Missy snapped.

“Um," said Soo-Min eloquently. "I think someone just plopped a blue Porta-Potty in the middle of my street.”


	11. Chapter 11

The Doctor staggered out of her TARDIS bent double, hair mussed and clothes in disarray. The instruments, when she’d glanced at them, had told her she was in--for fuck’s sake--_America_, not long from when she’d been. She straightened up; a quick look around revealed unassuming suburbia, a quiet tree-lined neighbourhood, normal in every way except for the reasonably conspicuous alien escape-pod buried nose-down in the street.

The TARDIS had likely picked up a signal it was transmitting, and dragged her here. She patted the side of it distractedly, plucked her sonic from her pocket, and struck out to investigate the wreckage.

_ Bzzzt! _A quick scan told her it was Mondasian.

Mondasian?

That meant… _ Oh_.

She shoved her hair back from her face and looked around again, scanning past a house and briefly locking eyes with a dark-haired girl pressed against a window, who waved.

She waved back, then turned away warily. There was no sign of Missy or the Master, meaning they could be anywhere. Spinning in a slow circle, she stretched her arm up, extending the radius of her sonic as far as it could go, hoping for the telltale _ beep-beep _ that meant another Time-Lord heartbeat. All she detected were typical human rhythms, one slower than normal, indicating an unconscious state. A knocked-out victim, perhaps? That was a place to start, at least.

The reading came from the dark-haired girl’s house, the closest one to the spaceship. She approached the building, took its front steps half-skipping, and rapped on the front door.

After a moment, the girl answered it.

“Hi,” the Doctor said, then found herself at a bit of a loss, since ‘Has a very sexy Scottish-but-actually-Gallifreyan madwoman or a very gay English-but-actually-Gallifreyan asshole showed up at your house any time recently?’ isn’t the best of conversation starters.

“Hi,” said the girl. “She said you’d be an old man.”

“I used to be,” said the Doctor reflexively, then blinked. “This ‘she’ you mention…? Dark hair, cheekbones…” she gestured vaguely, “Mary Poppins clothes?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” said the girl. “Are you one of the Doctor’s friends?”

“You know,” the Doctor reflected, “Speaking metaphorically, I’m not even sure, sometimes. But--oh, sorry. Got distracted. I’m the Doctor, actually.”

Soo-Min turned around and promptly hollered, “I TOLD YOU!”

There came a loud_ hmph_, and Missy, in new clothes, came to the door. “Hel_lo_, love,” she trilled as soon as they locked eyes, pulling the Doctor into a forced embrace and smooshing her head against her shoulder. “Took you long enough to get here.”

The Doctor extricated herself and pushed Missy away. “You made it out,” she said, in a tone that made it clear she was not pleased.

“Nope,” said Missy cheerfully. 

Before the Doctor could question that, the girl tugged her sleeve. “Why do you travel in a porta-potty?” she asked.

The Doctor gave her a look of horror. “I’m sorry?”

“Why do you travel in a porta-potty?”

“What did you just call my TARDIS?”

“What the hell is a TARDIS?”

“What the hell is a porta-potty?!”

“This conversation is going terribly,” Missy observed.

“No kidding,” the Doctor said, at the exact moment the girl said “No shit.”

“Alright,” said the Doctor, thoroughly confused, and pointing at Missy, “Is she holding you hostage?”

“Yes,” said Missy, indicating the girl. “_She _ is.”

“Oh, I kind of am,” the girl said in wonder. “Wowza. Hey, I’m Soo-Min, by the way.” She reached out, and the Doctor tentatively shook her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Er. ‘Wowza’?”

“Pepper it into your conversations starting today. Hey, my mom’s unconscious. You’re a Doctor; can you help?”

“I can try,” the Doctor said, stepping past Soo-Min into the house and crossing to the woman passed out on the floor. “Missy,” she hissed, looking up. “You were doing so much better.”

“I am doing better!” Missy insisted. “Look, she’s not_ dead_.”

“Or seriously hurt,” the Doctor admitted grudgingly. “She’s actually just asleep; well done.”

“Thank you.” Missy bobbed a curtsey. 

“I’m going to take you back with me,” the Doctor informed her, standing up.

“How romantic.”

The Doctor ignored her comment and stepped between her and Soo-Min. “Come on. Leave this innocent kid alone.”

“I didn’t _ do _ anything to her.”

“You held a knife to my throat,” Soo-Min pointed out.

“I didn’t _ use _ it--” but Missy didn't get a chance to finish, because the Doctor had looped her arm through hers and was starting to haul her toward the door.

“Wait!” Soo-Min called.

The Doctor turned. Missy did her best to turn, but the Doctor--surprisingly strong--had pinned her arms behind her.

“Are you guys just… leaving?” Soo-Min asked.

“Yep,” the Doctor said, and looked at Missy. She jerked her head in Soo-Min’s direction. “Memory wipe, you think?” she whispered.

“I CAN HEAR YOU,” Soo-Min yelled. “NO THANKS.”

“Sorry,” said the Doctor politely.

“How am I gonna cope after this?” Soo-Min demanded, T-Posing in the doorway to stop the two women from leaving. “I mean really. Spaceships in the middle of my street? Scottish women that dress like Mary Poppinsses and glow? Porta potties that boldly go where no-one has gone before? _ Hello?!_” She stomped her foot. “And I’m just supposed to, what? Go back to _ school _ on Monday?”

“I suppose so,” Missy said.

“How, Missy?” Soo-Min curled her lip. “I mean, really. What am I going to do?”

Missy groaned. “I don’t think you’re so _ horrifically _ special that you’ll do anything other than what humans have been doing for centuries.”

Soo-Min folded her arms. “What?”

“You’ll just…” Missy met Soo-Min’s gaze with something almost like affection. “Live.”

“As kindly and as bravely as you can, I think,” the Doctor added.

Soo-Min rolled her eyes and stepped aside. “Fine,” she said.

“Assuming,” Missy added, “You want to. Do you?”

Soo-Min didn’t get a chance to respond, because the Doctor, teeth gritted, had succeeded in pulling Missy out the door, down the stairs, and out of earshot.

Soo-Min watched from the doorway as, moments later, the blue box began to wheeze and phase and vanish.

She turned back to her mother, who was starting to stir, feeling suddenly very alone.


	12. Chapter 12

Missy was thrust into the TARDIS and none-too-gently dropped, landing hard on her side as the Doctor strode to the console and whirled it into activity. Suddenly confronted with an eyeful of brand-new interior design, Missy blinked up around herself, half-distressed. Her first impression was that literally  _ everything _ was far too bright. “You’ve redecorated,” she said nastily, scrubbing at her eyes. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like  _ you _ ,” said the Doctor, shortly. The TARDIS was cleaving through the Vortex at full-throttle, vibrating all over. Missy could sense the time-travel, and it stabilised her; that was familiar territory. But what the Doctor had just said was not.

Missy sat up, cocked her head to one side, and pouted. The pose was theatrical, but it hid a legitimate sting. This was off-script, this was  _ far _ off-script; that one line was more barbed than any way the previous Doctor had spoken to her. He had cut her with his compassion, but he had been accidental. What this Doctor had said was deliberately cruel. Missy knows deliberate cruelty; and she saw it flare, brief, in this Doctor’s young eyes.

The Doctor seemed to realise it, too, and looked away.

Missy tried, and failed, to stand. The Doctor jerked a lever down, and the TARDIS stopped with a shudder, spinning emptily in space.

“We’re nowhere in particular,” the Doctor informed Missy, stepping away from the console. “Doors are locked; you’re not getting out. So.” She gestured to her ex-friend, up and down in one crisp motion. “Explain yourself.”

Missy summoned all her coyness, prepared to deliver a stellar performance--then dropped it all from her stance. Dirty,  _ dying _ , she didn’t have the strength. She’d suppressed her regeneration so long her body was slowly turning numb; she tried, but standing proved impossible again. She closed her eyes.

“Why don’t you go first?” she asked, wanly. For the first time in her lives, she felt too small for her frame. She rubbed her fingers under her eyes, where dark, bruise-like circles were forming. She felt wrinkled, and weak, and bony.

She felt old.

The Doctor crossed to her and sat down in front of her, her body rigid and her eyes like steel. “All right,” she said, with cheer that chilled Missy to the bone. “I will.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay FIRST OF ALL people have REPEATEDLY been commenting variations on 'i miss soo-min' and 'i wish soo-min had become missy's companion' and stuff like that. now i am incredibly INCREDIBLY happy that people enjoy my lil oc. that being said, who the fuck do you think i am, russel t davies writing donna's memory wipe in journey's end? i, actually, intend on giving my funky fresh human characters Actually Good Endings. soo-min will NOT be ditched with her shitty mother, rest assured. jeez

The Doctor tilted her head, as if pondering how best to broach the heaviness of their history.

“I believe,” she began, “I maintain--”

“Yes, those are both roles you’ve assigned yourself. That’s old news, dear.”

The Doctor stared at her crossly. “That anyone, anywhere,” she continued, with a bit of a bite to her words, “Can change for the better.”

“Oh, how noble.”

“But I see now--” she went quiet. She stood, and Missy forced herself to stand, too.

“I see in a way I haven’t before,” the Doctor said, without a trace of uncertainty, “That there’s a fundamental divide between us.”

“Really?” Missy asked, extra sarcastic. “There’s a fundamental divide between the Doctor and the Master? _ Do _ elaborate, please, because I have absolutely no _ idea _ what you could _ possibly _ be on about.”

“The universe isn’t--the universe,” the Doctor said.

Missy quirked an eyebrow. “Is that what passes for wisdom now?”

“The universe is how you perceive the universe. If you see it as a thing to be conquered, you’ll go out and conquer it. If you see it as a thing to be loved, you’ll--”

Missy waved a hand through the Doctor’s speech. “Trite,” she said. “Obtuse. You see _ me _ as a thing to be conquered.”

“What? No.” The Doctor looked rattled. “No, I don’t.”

“You do,” Missy affirmed. “You want to overtake me, trap me, turn me _ good_, so I’m like you.”

“You’re already like me, Missy. You’re more like me than anyone else in the universe.” The Doctor shrugged helplessly. “And I don’t know what that says about either of us.”

“If you hate me,” Missy drew her lips together and forced a smile to them, “Why haven’t you destroyed me?”

“It’s not what I do.” The unspoken _ It’s what _ you _ do _ wasn’t lost on either of them.

“Even after all I’ve done?” Missy added lightly.

The response the Doctor could make here, _ Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference_, belongs to someone better.

“Yes,” she said instead.

“How sweet.”

“I care about you. I _ insist _ on caring about you.”

Missy smiled, not un-gently. “That’s very foolish, love.”

“I know,” the Doctor said. “I know.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Care about you?”

“Yes.”

The Doctor’s facade of calmness splintered. “Because when I see nothing, when I know nothing, when I _ am _ nothing, I will have you. You are one of the precious few certainties this universe can give me. You don’t disappear. You don’t die.” The anger was crawling out of her now, and she was letting it. “But you don’t change.”

“I have changed,” Missy said quietly. “I told you.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, nodding quickly, and there was an unhinged undercurrent to the gesture this time.

Every regeneration has dealt with anger differently. Her ninth concentrated every inch of it into the set of his eyes, the thin line of his lips. Her tenth let the anger flow through him, from his hearts to his hands, and screamed it. Her eleventh grew cold with it, grew harsher. Her twelfth carried it with him always. Her thirteenth regeneration felt it, acknowledged it, and let it go. 

Not now.

Now, the Doctor’s eyes glittered with a cold ferocity Missy would only associate with herself. Her feet were planted, her fists clenched. She looked stranger, darker, and madder.

And better.

“When I regenerate,” she went on, “Some things get blurred, but you know as well as I do that what hurts stays clear.” She met Missy’s eyes with zero sympathy. “It’s a funny thing, memory. I’ve lost my memories. I’ve given them away. I’ve even had them stolen from me. But through working and trying and travelling, I have gotten them back, because I’m the Doctor, which means I heal everyone, which means,” she took a deep breath, “I heal_ me_.”

Missy watched her, inscrutable and insurmountable.

“So I remember what you said. And I remember what _ I _ said. The hospital, the Cybermen, the farmers, the children, Bill, and you.” She paused, and made a gesture of acquiescence. “And you.”

“Yes,” said Missy dryly, “Two of me.”

“I know. And I said to you, to both of you, ‘Why not, at the end, just be kind?’”

She stared at Missy. Missy met her gaze until she couldn’t.

“And I said you’d changed, and I asked you to stand with me, and you, and I mean _ you _ you, heard. Listened. Which made it worse, really, ’cause you still looked at me, right in the eyes, like you can’t do now, and you said…” she rocked back on her heels. “Tell me what you said.”

Missy shook her head. “I don’t--want to.”

“Tell me.”

“I said sorry.”

“You said no.”

The Doctor stepped away, began pacing. Missy remained in the middle of the room, shoulders stiff, her hands rigid behind her. “You said ‘thanks for trying,’ and you took my hand and left me _ without hope_, and then--” she gestured down at herself. “Well, look.”

“You regenerated.”

“Alone.”

Missy winced.

“That was performative,” said the Doctor coldly.

“Yes,” Missy admitted, “It was.”

The Doctor circled her. “And after that particular betrayal, for a while I thought you couldn’t change, but then I realised you can! Give yourself a gold star, pat yourself on the back, and patch things up with your past self, ’cause you absolutely can do it. You really absolutely,” she shrugged and spread her arms, “_Can _ change. You just won’t.”

There was a long, and very charged, silence.

“I don’t deny everything you’ve just said,” Missy began, then stopped. Almost laughed. “Actually, I only disagree with one thing, which might be a new record for us.” She looked at the Doctor with the beginnings of a smile, but the Doctor didn’t respond. Missy pressed on anyway. “You’re the Doctor, you said, and you’re right. But you don’t save everyone.”

And there was something in her voice, something hanging on to that very last sentence, and it did what very few things can do.

It made the Doctor stop. 

“What do you mean?” she asked. Her eyebrows lifted.

“You didn’t come back for me.”

The Doctor scoffed bitterly. “I couldn’t have, Missy.”

“Oh?”

“You turned on me,” the Doctor snapped. “You ran off with the Master--what happened to him, by the way? Did you travel together, the two of you, double trouble? You and the one person you could ever actually be decent to? How much blood will I have to clean up now? How many planets? How many _ people _?”

Missy passed a hand over her face, rested her fingers on the bridge of her nose, and took a careful breath.

“The Master is dead,” she said heavily, and meant it in more ways than one.

The Doctor wasn’t impressed. “Yes, I know. You’re standing here.”

“He was stabbed.”

The Doctor was so surprised she physically took a step back. She blinked like an owl, incredulous. “How’d that happen?”

Missy clenched her hands into fists. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Missy,” the Doctor said darkly, “_What happened_?”

“I did it,” Missy spat.

“Did what?”

“What you wanted.”

“_What_?”

“What you asked for.”

The Doctor threw her arms up. “_What_?!”

“The right thing.”

The words hovered in the air between them, and the Doctor went quiet. “Aw, mate,” she said flatly. “Well done.”

Missy inclined her head in thanks, but the Doctor wasn’t finished.

“I’m sure that’s very dramatic and grandiose for you,” she said, “Doing one good thing once. But I do good things just about daily and I don’t make a fuss. So don’t ask me to fall back into your arms now, Missy. Don’t ask me for forgiveness. Don’t ever, ever, _ ever _ think you’re capable of that.”

“I know.” Missy closed her eyes. 

“I’m glad.” The Doctor was relentless. “Now tell me what happened to the Master.”

“The Master is dead,” Missy repeated. And then she confessed. “I killed him.”

There was a long silence.

“No,” the Doctor said at last. “I don’t believe you. I want to! Oh, I want to. You have no idea how much I’d like to believe you’d do that. But kill yourself?” She shook her head. “That’s the one thing you could never do. Besides, he’d never let you get away with it.”

“He didn’t let me get away with it.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Missy held out her hand. Her shaking hand. Her unmistakably glowing hand.

The Doctor jerked backward, as if she expected Missy to regenerate right then and there. “Missy,” she hissed, her breath short and pained. She came closer, reached a hand out, a hair’s breadth away from touching her. “You--you’ve been--how long?”

Missy grinned. “_Two days._”

The Doctor clapped a hand to her mouth. Missy nodded.

“No,” the Doctor managed.

“Yes.” 

“You’ve been suppressing it for--”

“I’ve been suppressing something far stronger for far longer, you know.”

“The regeneration, it’s going to be unstable, it’s--you might not even come out of it alive! You could be _ mangled_, or--Missy, it could _ hurt _ you! Badly!”

“It already has.” Missy nodded formally. “I haven’t been able to feel my limbs or do basic math for hours. I’ll be all right, though.”

“But you’re going to _ die_!”

“I’m going to change.” A pause, a languid smirk. “I like proving people wrong.”

The Doctor took Missy’s hand, the one that was still whole. She placed her own hand over it, laced their fingers as she stared into the face of her oldest, strangest friend. She could feel Missy’s stuttering pulse beneath her fingers. Two hearts; only one of them beating. 

Slowly, she put Missy’s hand on her chest. 

The Doctor took a deep breath. “I,” she began, and broke off. “I’m about to say something--”

Missy’s eyes widened. One side of her mouth pressed up. The Doctor reached a hand up and rested it on Missy’s cheek, tenderly brushed away a strand of dark hair. “I haven’t said it as often as I’ve needed to.”

“What?” Missy breathed, leaning her whole body into the Doctor’s touch.

“I don’t want you to go,” said the Doctor, and kissed her.

Missy practically slammed their bodies together, grabbing the Doctor’s face and twisting her fingers up into her hair, kissing her hard and determined and desperate, and this time Doctor gave back what she got, as if to say_ Payback_, and _ Thank you_, and _ I mean it_.

It was awkward. And loving.

And long.

“_Well_,” sighed Missy, once the Doctor had pulled away. “Well.” She caught her breath and adjusted her skirt, wondered how well it would fit her later. Her lipstick was smeared all over the Doctor’s mouth. “Is that what you wanted to say?”

“No.” The Doctor dropped Missy’s hand and stepped back a safe distance. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“What for?” Missy laughed. “Regenerating isn’t much like being dead. It’s more like being…”

“What?” the Doctor asked.

“Remastered.”

And Missy saw the Doctor laugh, a short, sharp, clumsy, genuinely _ beautiful _ laugh.

And she laughed, too.

And she let herself go.


	14. Chapter 14

THREE HOURS LATER.

“And _ then_,” a younger, snappier, freshly-regenerated Missy was saying to the Doctor, “After I’d stabbed him--quite nicely, by our mutual assessment of the wound--that motherfucker, that absolute obsolete _ tool_, by which I mean my past self of course, laser-screwdrivered me in the back. Me! Not just me, _ US! _ He genuinely thought we both oughta die, that they should just draw the curtains on the Master right then and there ’cause that’s a _ real _ good way to end a quest for intergalactic dominion, face-up in the dirt on a crappy-ass spaceship. I mean, didn’t he think I deserved better than that? Didn’t he think _ he _ deserved better than that? And the other thing, the other thing--he thought, he _ really thought_, that one blast could stop both of a Time-Lord’s hearts! Both of them at once, can you believe that bastard? Like, sure, he hit me bad enough to kill me, _ eventually_, but it took _ two days_, during which I learned a great deal of shit I’ll probably retain forever, including the fact that _ damn_, you’ve regenerated into a badass. That shit you said to me? ‘You can change, give yourself a gold star, pat yourself on the back, and patch things up with your past self, because you absolutely can do it, you really absolutely can change; you just won’t’? That was _ ice-cold! _ That was _ very _ me. I could not be prouder of your bitchy side. And, speaking of personalities, I really gotta go figure out mine. Knock around the universe a bit, do some evil.” 

The Doctor sighed. “You’re still evil?”

Missy blew a loud, exasperated raspberry. “I don’t _ fuckin’ _know.”

The Doctor gave her a hopeful look. “Really?” And then, more cautiously, “Why?”

Missy laced her fingers together. “Because--and you’ve felt this; it’s a Time-Lord curse. You can sense your hearts stopping, and all you can think is that you could have done so much more. You’re dying, and you know that you should have been…” She struggled for the word. “Better.”

The Doctor gave the speech a deep consideration. “You think of what you’ve done as _ you_, as this very special _ you _ you’ve been able to be, and you try to make your peace with what you’ve done and what you haven’t. I know.” She paused, contemplative, and regarded Missy unreadably. “I didn’t know you knew.”

“I do now. Because I tried it, as I thought I was going to die. I tried it, and I found nothing. There’s no peace in this--” she gestured to herself. “There’s no peace in this. Do you remember what I said to you when I tried to give you that cyber-army? ‘All those people suffering in the Dalek camps? Now you can save them. All those bad guys winning all the wars? Go and get the good guys back.’ And you refused.”

“Because absolute power is evil.”

“Because that kind of power would turn you into me. And earlier…” she allowed herself a smile, suddenly softer. “The colony in space, on Uxarieus.”

The Doctor blinked. “That was a long time ago. The nineteen-seventies, I think.”

“We go back far, love. You do remember, don’t you?”

The Doctor snorted amicably. “You offered me ‘a half-share in the universe.’ Hard to forget.”

“Do you remember what I said then?”

“Something along the lines of I-have-this-armageddon-weapon-that-can-take-over-the-galaxy-and-we-should-use-it-together.”

“I said, ‘You could reign benevolently; you could end wars, suffering, disease.’ I said, ‘We could _ save _ the universe.’ Do you remember that?”

“I do.”

“I’m glad. Because it means that I have always been willing to be good if you’d stand with me.” She let that sink in. “But now I am willing to be good standing alone. Who we are is what we’ve done; it’s also what we stand for. I fell where I stood, and I died for you, Doctor.” She said it like a recitation. “Without hope, without witness, without reward.”

The Doctor looked at her with pity, with something approaching love. “I know.”

“If I’d died, I wouldn’t have to do proper, consistent good. Or proper, consistent decency, or proper, consistent kindness, or any of that. If I’d stayed dead, something would have been satisfied; a trajectory would have stopped at a reasonable point. But I’m alive; my path toward whatever ‘good’ means must continue. With no killing, this time. No weapons; just words.”

The Doctor recognised the phrase.

“Essentially,” Missy went on, “To honour what I’ve done, to carry it with me, I need to keep moving forward, onward, up. I need to learn fair play. I need to learn how to look at the people around me and…”

“Help,” the Doctor supplied.

Missy nodded.

The Doctor’s face crinkled into a massive grin. “Aw, Missy,” she said. “I’m so proud.”

Missy shut that down. “I’m not doing it for you.”

The Doctor wasn’t fazed. “For yourself, then?”

“For the people I’ve killed. Now I know what it’s like to be murdered by me,” she said with a trace of a smirk. “It’s not fun.” 

“Travel with me,” the Doctor offered. “Every star in the universe, like I promised, like_ we _ promised.” She reached out. “We could start today.”

“_Oh_,” Missy said, a full crest of emotion, physically restraining herself from falling toward the Doctor. “More than anything, I want to.” Her breath hitched; she forced herself back. “But I can’t.”

The Doctor looked crushed; her fingers withdrew. “Why not?”

“I wasn’t always called ‘the Master,’ but I’ve lived long lives under that name. Now that I’m free of it, I need to discover who I am without it.”

The Doctor nodded. 

“I love you, my dear Doctor. I do, in whatever way I am capable of, every minute, every second, every beat of my hearts.” She laid a hand on the Doctor’s cheek. “But I don’t need more you. I need more time.”

The Doctor covered Missy's hand with her own. “More time alone, you mean?”

“Yes.”

The Doctor shook her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“People like us shouldn’t travel alone.”

Missy scoffed. “I know you,” she said. “You’ve probably already found more humans to love.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, smiling. “I have. I think you should, too. Find someone to care for.”

“You know,” Missy reflected, “I think I already have.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPYFALL SPOILERS AHEAD!

She ripped a “20% off one haircut” coupon out of an old newspaper, slipped it into the inside cover of the _ Calculus For Dummies _ book she’d stolen (and annotated with helpful comments like “ignore this bit; it’s jackshit. xox, Missy”), and had the Doctor drop her off at Soo-Min’s house.

Smoothing her hands down her skirt again--she’d kept that habit, how lovely--she marched up the front steps and rapped smartly (four times, of course) on the door.

After a few minutes, Mrs. Ko opened it, looking up at her incuriously. 

“Hello,” Missy said eloquently. “I’m--Miss--Mrs--ah, I’m Dr. Who. I was sent by Soo-Min’s tutor. Is she home?”

“Soo-Min?” Mrs. Ko asked, as if shocked at the idea that anyone would voluntarily speak with her daughter. She looked down at the book in Missy’s hands. “Are you dropping off a coursebook? I can give that to her.”

Missy snatched the book away and pressed it between her fingers, trying (old habits die hard) to build a hypnotic charge between her words. “I’d like to speak to her face-to-face, if you don’t mind.”

“We didn’t schedule a session for today.”

“I know.” This human was not going to get the best of her. “It’s important. Soo-Min is one of my top students.”

“I can call her down.”

Missy smiled imperiously. “Thank you.”

And after three minutes, Soo-Min--with a new haircut and new clothes, but still unequivocally herself--arrived.

“Who are you?” she asked bluntly, standing in the doorway with her arms folded.

Missy debated how to introduce herself and came to an obvious conclusion. She bobbed a curtsey. “The Doctor’s Mistress.”

“Mm,” said Soo-Min, then burst into a laugh. “Thought so.” She uncrossed her arms. “Nice to see you again, Missy.”

And that sentence, ‘Nice to see you again,’ shouldn’t’ve given Missy pause, but it did. Nobody in _years_, she realised, had thought it was nice to see her. No human, possibly ever, had associated her with anything positive at all. 

“You look different,” Soo-Min observed.

“So do you,” Missy returned.

“You’re still in my mom’s clothes.”

“Shame.”

“Not really.” Soo-Min tilted her head. “You look good.”

Missy stared, dismayed. “Do I really look _ good _? Uch, I’d hoped to look evil.”

“Don’t worry; you still do. The two aren’t mutually exclusive! Trust me, lesbians_ love _ hot evil ladies.”

“I know that,” said Missy, irritated. “I am one.”

“A hot evil lady?”

“No! A _ lesbian_. I’m a hot _ good _ lady now, I’ll have you know.”

“Kin,” said Soo-Min succinctly. “Proud of you. So you’re really gonna be nice now?”

“I don’t know about _nice_,” Missy replied, suddenly rather lordly. “But I have elected to continue with all this redemption arc business. I mean, what’s the alternative? Regenerate into a man and call myself O and join MI6 and turn my TARDIS into a shack and ally myself with berserk light creatures and dress up as a Nazi and raze Gallifrey just cuz someone lied to me about my childhood? God, how ridiculous does_ that_ sound?”

“Pretty ridiculous,” Soo-Min admitted. “Glad you’re not doing any of that.”

“Thanks! Me too. Burning planets is no fun; makes your clothes smell like smoke. Besides, I’m a renegade, not a reneger. Does any of that make sense?”

“Absolutely not.”

“_Thank fuck_.” 

Soo-Min laughed again, then sobered, and suddenly gave Missy a piercing stare.

“What?” Missy asked, feeling pinned.

“I do want to,” Soo-Min said. “What you asked. I do.”

Missy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

She did, though, she realised. It was Soo-Min’s reply, the answer to the question Missy had posed at the end of their last conversation.

Soo-Min nodded. “To… you know. Live. And shit. Cuz now I know...” she trailed off, thought hard about the right way to put it. “Well, I always knew, I think. But you reminded me of it. That the universe is,” she spread her arms grandly, “Pretty wack.”

Missy raised an eyebrow. “Sure is.”

Soo-Min dropped her arms, then flung them wide again. “It’s crazy, dude! Gravity waves! Binary stars! Dark matter! Supermassive black holes! Quasars, pulsars, nebulae! All of it expanding and contracting and collapsing, all of it boiling and burning and being _ born_, and all of it made of the same shit I am! It’s huge! And it’s _ mine_.”

“It’s yours?”

“This is my universe,” Soo-Min said staunchly. “This is my planet. How many humans are there?”

“Good lord. Too many.”

“Seven-and-a-half billion, Missy.”

“I rest my case.”

“Seven-and-a-half-_ billion_, and I’m the _ only one _ who’s me. Do you know how powerful that is? No? Eat shit, then. How many life-forms would you say are out there?” 

Missy blinked. “In space? Trillions.”

“And--just to confirm--I’m the only one who’s me? In all of space and time? In _ literally all of space and time? _”

“Yes.”

“Well, there you have it,” said Soo-Min simply. “An ordinary human. Maybe the coolest thing there is.”

“That’s quite the speech.”

“Thank you; I rehearsed it.”

Missy clapped once. 

“Are you heading out, then?” Soo-Min asked. “Off to see more of the universe? Bother everyone some more?”

“Yes.” Missy looked at Soo-Min critically. “I don’t suppose you’d want to… take a trip with me?”

Soo-Min pursed her lips. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

Missy looked surprised. “But you said--”

“That it’ll be hard to go back to the ‘normal’ world. Yeah. It has been.”

“So why don’t you want to come?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to come!” Soo-Min calmed herself down, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to come,” she repeated, “But here’s the thing. Time-travel means I leave. Time-travel means I _ change_. Time-travel means I take my whole life out-of-sync with everyone else on my planet. And I kind of belong here. On Earth.” She took a careful breath. “And--well, here’s a thing about me. I used to be depressed. Really depressed. I spent a lot of time desperately wanting to be special, and it hurt me that I wasn’t. I wanted to be good at everything; I wanted to be superhuman, somehow. And then I met you, who’s exactly that. And you’re--”

“Awful?”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit,” Soo-Min said, cracking a smile. “You’re just not something I’d want to be.”

“Ah,” Missy said, “Is this where I should I start clapping again?”

“I’m not finished.”

“Oh,” said Missy, surprised. “Sorry.”

Soo-Min gave her a look. “Did you just say sorry?”

“Erm, yes?”

“Wow, you really _ are _ improving.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence; your faith in me is edifying.” Missy flapped her hand vaguely. “Do go on with your monologue, then. It’s not entirely uninteresting, you know.”

Soo-Min shrugged. “There’s not much else. Just… I guess I’ve kind of realised I’m fine as I am. That I’m just a seventeen-year-old kid. And that’s okay; that’s good. I matter.”

Something about that sentence seemed odd, but Missy couldn’t put her finger on what. “Here,” she said brusquely, dismissing the thought. “I got you a--tool.”

“A gift.”

“A useful tool.”

Soo-Min took the offered book. “Thank you,” she said. “But I’ve already passed the class.” She smiled at the surprise on Missy’s face. “Yeah. It’s been a while since we last spoke.”

That threw Missy off. “How long?”

Soo-Min thought a moment. “About a year.”

Missy went quiet. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine. How long was it for you?”

“A few hours.”

Soo-Min shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe I’m glad I don’t live that way. Cuz, hey, unlike you and unlike your friend, even _ without _ glowing hands or two hearts, even _ without _ time-travel and a spaceship, I have what it takes to be--”

“Fantastic,” said the Doctor, coming up the path behind them.

“Yeah,” said Soo-Min, not at all surprised to see her there. “Yeah.”

The Doctor skipped up the front steps, patted Missy on the back, then stepped forward and met Soo-Min’s eyes. “Thank you,” she said solemnly.

Soo-Min snorted. “For what?”

“For giving me my friend back.”

“Aw,” said Soo-Min. “That’s sweet. But I didn’t do anything, really. Honestly, she helped me more than I helped her.”

“Oh?” the Doctor asked. “Wowza.”

Soo-Min grinned. “Maybe she’s not so bad of a doctor herself.”

“Then I’m out of a job,” said the Doctor helplessly. “Wait, really? She _ actually _helped you?”

“She did me feel better,” Soo-Min admitted. She looked at Missy and smiled. “Thank you for that.”

“Thank _ you_,” Missy said, “For exactly the same.”

The Doctor, sensing the depth of the moment between them, stepped away.

Missy looked inward, and she saw a woman named Osgood and a boy named Lee. She saw them all, for a moment, the thousands and thousands of figures she’d destroyed without compassion, the people who were now beyond anyone’s help.

She looked outward, and she saw a living person she _ could _ help. A person who wasn’t powerful or grandiose, who wasn’t glorious or glorified or genius or spectacular. A person who just lived, as bravely as she could.

Soo-Min, who was right. Soo-Min, who was decent. Soo-Min, who was kind. Just that; just kind.

“Show me that,” Missy said, reaching out to her. “Teach me that. What you said. That one human matters. That one life matters. Please.”

“Dude,” said Soo-Min, taking Missy’s hand and shaking it. “Did you seriously think I would turn down an opportunity to see all of time and space? It's like I said: this universe is boiling and burning and being born, and it's huge, and it’s mine. _ Hell fucking_ _yeah._ I’m coming.”


End file.
